Null
by Pink Ferret
Summary: Lucrecia only exists within an incomplete consciousness and she lives each day remembering the son she never held. [lucrecia, vincent, lucrecia's cave] [oneshot]


**Disclaimer: Square-Enix owns all. All characters used are for entertainment only and not for profit.**

**Notes: OK, so it's a little off-canon, but hey. This is _fanfiction_ – everyone writes whatever the hell they want.:P**

**Takes place just before Vincent finds Lucrecia in the cave. Review or don't, but no flames. If you hate it, by all means tell me, but be civil. TTFN!**

* * *

It is dawn. The sun is rising over the eastern horizon, but the weak rays are not yet strong enough to light the dark. The wind whistles around the dead mountains and whips ancient ice from age-old peaks, unrelenting and yielding to no man. It snakes around jagged pillars to find a huddled figure shuddering in an isolated cavern and hisses at its find.

The figure shivers more and shifts, revealing itself to be a human female hugging her knees. She pushes herself unsteadily to her feet and seeks shelter behind the waterfall, laying her head against the cold wet stone and praying once more for peace to be granted. But she knows that she can not rest, and the evil flowering inside her broken body will only continue to remind her why.

_Lucrecia sees Hojo for the first time in Nibelheim when she is meeting her colleagues for the Jenova Project. She likes Gast, of course, but it is Hojo that captures her attention. He is determined to succeed; failure is not an option. He is driven solely by ambition._

The sea below crashes and booms, and the aftershocks of the waves slapping the underside of the cavern's floor reverberate around the frozen stone and her listless head. The echoes of the waves bring a new sound with them; a clanging sound, like metal hitting rock.

_She sees Hojo pacing around the floor of the library. Gast has gone; departed, and the Jenova Project has a new leader. Hojo looks up and smiles a small tight smile at her, and Lucrecia feels her own heart tighten in response. Hojo will not let the Project fail, she knows, and it suddenly strikes her to thank him in the future when success is finally achieved. She turns to leave and sees the Turk in the doorway, and idly remembers that she has agreed to go to lunch with him. She wonders if that would make Hojo jealous._

The dark, spindly legs of pain wrap themselves around her heart and its wings spread as she feels all the hurt well up in her chest. She would cry, but she has cried too much already and it does nothing for her aching heart and mourning soul. Each day she dies a little inside, but it is never enough to set her free; just enough to remember what she lost.

_It was never anything serious to her, but for Vincent she is everything. She is unaware of how much it hurts to love, but her time is soon to come._

_Vincent shows no sign of how much it pains him; she would never know. He understands when she walks out hand in hand with the mad professor, and hopes against hope that she will be happy._

Lucrecia turns to face the waterfall, letting her face become spattered and sprayed with chilled white water. She watches the liquid rush and fall with wide empty eyes and does not care for the dull limp hair plastered to her cheek.

The metallic sound echoes again under the sheet of stone and Lucrecia wonders if she will ever find out what it is. It is not that Lucrecia cares much for the unusual occurrence, but it makes a welcome alternative to the quotidian emptiness. The cave is devoid of life, she knows, for she is not alive but simply not yet dead.

_Lucrecia smiles a wide smile and her hair winds around her as she spins. Hojo is hers! The unrestrained joy bubbles up inside of her and she laughs, knowing she could never be happier. _

_How ironically true that would prove to be._

The cave floor shudders and Lucrecia lays flat on her back. A grinding sound vibrates loudly in her head and tremors shake her hollow body, demanding attention. Lucrecia pays them no heed and turns her gaze to the high ceiling, looking but not seeing. Her glasses have long been broken – she cannot remember when she lost them or if she even had any. It is becoming harder to distinguish between what is (was?) real and what is not (perhaps it never was).

_"The adult specimens' bodies reject the Jenova cells – they are already fully grown and will not allow for further development. But a child… There is the possibility to create a perfect being! A human far stronger than anyone - no, than anything - alive today!" _

_Hojo__ glows from the inside out as he discusses his Project with Lucrecia. Lucrecia smiles at his unfettered enthusiasm and she knows how she could make him infinitely happy and bring reward to their dedication. How she could make him truly love her._

_Lucrecia leans forward and places her hand over Hojo's on the cold metal countertop, and peers at him over her thin-rimmed glasses (which would normally hide her eyes from the world with a shield of reflected light). _

_Hojo__ looks at her and understands. His face breaks into a smile, and Lucrecia does not notice the complementary glint of mad ambition in his eyes. _

Lucrecia hears… valves. Valves pumping under the water. She hears the hiss as they slide up and down and the faint ripples of sound bring whispers of…

…of what?

Lucrecia is intrigued, but does nothing, because she is afraid of what intrigue could bring. So she waits.

_Lucrecia rests her hand on her swollen stomach and waits patiently for Hojo to arrive. She knows that the Jenova injections are vital to the Project, but she wishes that they did not hurt so much. Footsteps echo down the empty corridors of the basement as Hojo comes closer to the main laboratory. But since when did one man have four foot falls?_

_Then Lucrecia hears two voices arguing and she realises that the Turk is here too. But he is no scientist, so how can he challenge Dr. Hojo?_

_"I do not care for the opinion of a Turk! As far as I am concerned, Turks have no opinions. That is what they are paid for, am I right?" Hojo snaps at the blue-suited guard._

_"And even a Turk like me knows that what you are doing is wrong! There are reasons that human experimentation is objected to!" Valentine cries._

_Hojo__ sneers. "But it's perfectly fine to murder people for money, which I do believe you do. Oh dear. How terribly wrong of me to try to help improve the human race instead of destroying it!" _

_Vincent is taken aback. "It is not right…" he responds._

_"Lucrecia and I are scientists. We know what we are doing, and we do not need an interfering Turk obstructing our means of success."_

_Lucrecia glances over at Vincent and feels an alien stab of guilt. She lowers her head and says nothing as Hojo tells him to leave. She shrugs the feeling off as pity for his being so misguided, but as Hojo approaches her with the needle she feels guilty like never before._

Sounds that Lucrecia hasn't heard in years reach her ears and she tries to sit up, but she is not strong enough. The stone floor carries the vibrations well and she listens intently with an ear on the ground. For a moment her mind rises through the fog of incomplete consciousness and her eyes come into focus, but the effects are only temporary and she soon relapses.

She still listens, and she revels in the sounds of voices, of movement, of life. She cannot yet tell what the voices are saying, but it brings her strange comfort to know that something alive is close.

_The sickness rises inside her again and Lucrecia rushes to the bathroom. She puts it down to morning sickness, although the baby is nearly the full nine months gone and she feels weak and feverish. _

Something stirs within Lucrecia as she realises that there are two voices speaking, one with the high pitch of a girl and the other with the lower notes of a man. She is beginning to recognise some of their words now, although she does not know what they mean.

"… submarine… safe…"

"…gawd! ... the point…"

_clack__ clack_

Lucrecia fancies that the girl must be wearing high heels.

_Lucrecia screams as the baby slips through her legs. She hears Hojo's voice calling her name, but she does not respond. The birth is causing her body too much pain, and the sickness still remains. _

_The baby is crying in Hojo's arms and she calls weakly for her child, **her** baby. But Hojo cannot hear – the baby's wails and shrieks drown out her feeble voice and Lucrecia cries. Her baby has been born now and still her body is racked with bursts of sharp acute pain. _

_Lucrecia finds that she is no longer able to move, and even when she is too weak to do anything she still wants to see her child. She wants to hold it but she can't because Hojo is holding it and trying to stop the screaming._

_The child calms down and she hears the man declare it to be a boy. Lucrecia wants to hold him – why won't he let her?_

_Hojo__ names the child Sephiroth and walks closer to Lucrecia. Lucrecia only sees blurred visions now and her body will not obey her when she tries to sit up. Gods damn him, why won't he give her the child!_

_Hojo__ calls her name and shakes her and Lucrecia wants to scream at him to give her Sephiroth, tell him that she's perfectly fine and she wants her baby **now**! But Hojo is quiet and shakes her some more before stepping back and covering her with a sheet. What is going on? Why won't he let her hold Sephiroth?_

_Lucrecia breaks inside as Hojo leaves the room._

The people are coming closer now. She can hear them coming up the cracking stone steps she had once climbed (or had she come from the mountains?) and the girl is impatient and vocal. She can't yet see them through the waterfall, but she decides that the girl must be young. She listens again to the steps coming closer to the surface (to her) and realises that there are more footsteps than there are people.

But Lucrecia finds it hard to tell if that means there are others visiting her cavern or if her hearing is failing her. She closes her eyes and lets her head fall towards the waterfall again, cheek against water-cooled rock.

_Lucrecia is falling and she slips into some form of sleep. It is the last time Lucrecia is at peace. _

_There is nothing but the blackness of her own mind as the cold encircles itself around her._

She shivers and turns her body in the direction of her head before bringing her knees up to her chest. She wraps her arms around her chest and places her feverish forehead against the ragged material covering her legs. The people approaching should be bringing her closer to reality; instead, the memories pounce on her defenceless mind with increasing frequency and lucidity.

_It is bitterly cold. Lucrecia does not know where she is or how long she has been here. She tries to look around the area she is in, but her eyes won't focus and she is surrounded by chilled water from the waist down. She scratches, strikes and clambers, pulling herself out of the water onto the nearest rock ledge she could find and collapses. _

_Time passes; however, that is irrelevant now. Lucrecia drags herself up the ancient stone steps and finds a waterfall. It is beautiful, but that too is now irrelevant._

_She falls to her knees and cries for the son she never got to hold. _

Lucrecia's blank eyes snap open and she stares unseeing at the waterfall. The strangers have reached her level, and a vague fleeting feeling of panic flits through her veins. She would like to see something living again – however, she would not like anything to see _her_. She has fallen too far into madness, she knows, and the sickness plagues her still.

_clack__ clack_

She wills the long-unused lens in her eyes to focus as she makes out three distinct shapes through the water's translucent curtain. She knits her brow together in dull anticipation as she waits to see if they will discover her.

_The Jenova inside of her will not let her die. She is denied the final right._

In a moment of rare clarity Lucrecia sees who has found her hidden waterfall. A teenage girl, no more than seventeen, with short black hair and weapons of a ninja stands close to a tall stern man with long black hair. His face is hidden by a high-necked cloak and a red bandanna. There is a third person – a stoic blonde-haired man with a sword almost as big as his body and disconcerting blue eyes. They glow like the Mako she remembers studying in the forsaken mansion.

The girl does not wear high heels. She and the blond wear boots, and so does the taller man – but his are capped in metal.

He seems familiar to Lucrecia.

_He tells Lucrecia that he loves her. She runs away, afraid. Her feelings lie with another man._

Tall stature. Dark hair, pale skin; perfect contrast.

_He watches her flee and he feels his heart breaking, even though this was what he secretly expected._

Eyes that betray nothing.

_He would never show her how much it hurt him to see her happy without him, even though he wanted nothing more than for her to be happy._

Lucrecia finds the strength that has eluded her for so many years and sits bolt upright. The bile rises up in her throat, black and disgusting but still she continues; for the first time in years she has a resolve.

Fog clears in her mind as one particular memory soars above the others; inextricably linked with those most dear to her. She remembers the company, the fear (she did not ask for his love), the guilt, and his smile. No one has seen it since then, but she does not know.

Air hisses through lungs creaking with disuse, as she has just remembered that to speak she must breathe. She has not needed to breathe for a long time; neither has she needed to eat or drink or sleep (precious memories that fade as others take over them).

Her vocal chords refuse to comply with the orders from her fever-stricken brain and she croaks. But something is inside her now, something that was not before – a will? She tries again and her breath flies from her body like a dying butterfly.

"Vincent…?"

The dark man snaps his head round with unnatural speed and the ninja girl leaps back in fright. His eyes are not like the ones from her memory (or can she just not remember things clearly anymore?) and for once she does not have to consciously keep her dull eyes focused.

No, he has changed. Burnt gold metal shines in the half-light and reveals long, pointed talons where his hand should be and his eyes are an unearthly shade of red. He no longer wears the Turk uniform and she asks herself how long it has been.

_now__ she knows that love hurts because shecries for thelove she never hadand she mourns for the son she never held_

"Lucrecia!" Vincent paces uneasily but still quickly towards her and his voice is deep and soothing in its own way. The ninja and the soldier turn round in shock - the presence of someone else in the cave surprises them.

"Back!" she calls weakly, but draws on slowly released inner strength. "Stay back!"

_her__ son that would never know her name_

Vincent stops, and his hair (so long and different to what it was) hides his eyes from her (unnaturally red). The ninja looks on in bewilderment and wonders why this strange woman asks for Vincent and then tells him to stay away. She knows Vincent does not like ambivalence.

_all__ because they wanted the perfect being_

"Lucrecia... You're alive..." Vincent's voice betrays nothing and the low harmonies echo around the chilled cavern.

"I wanted to disappear... I couldn't be with anyone... I wanted to die... But the Jenova inside me wouldn't let me die..." Lucrecia begins. Her voice is still dry and cracked, but that does not matter to her now and never will.

_the__ boy who would never know she cared_

"Lately, I dream a lot of Sephiroth... My dear, dear child. Ever since he was born I never got to hold him, even once... Not even once. You can't call me his mother..."

_not__ even once_

"That... is my sin..."

Vincent feels something other than the pain and it takes him a few seconds to realise that it is pity. He does not want her to be unhappy, and never did.

"Back! Stay back! Vincent... Won't you please tell me?"

_would__ he ever know?_

"…What?"

"Is Sephiroth still alive? I heard he died five years ago. But I see him in my dreams so often..."

_Jenova hears; Jenova feels; Jenova seethes_

_she__ claims him as her own with unholy fervour_

"And, I know that physically, like myself, he can't die so easily. Please, Vincent, tell me..."

"Lucrecia… Sephiroth is dead."

Lucrecia has not cried in a long time, but now she does. The strength she had moments ago escapes her and she curls up into a tight little ball. Vincent can not tell if she is crying because her pained expression has not changed, and her face is wet already from the waterfall.

Lucrecia falls back into her ailing mind and Vincent knows he is not wanted. He turns to leave, face unreadable as ever, and he takes his companions with him. He feels hollow, but he knows that Lucrecia cares only for her son; she cared not that she had seen the ex-Turk again.

The ninja babbles all the way down – who was she? Why is she there? How do you know her? But Vincent is silent. He has years of experience in keeping secrets (even the ones that destroyed him and the lives of others). Vincent is chained to demons that share his body and Vincent accepts them as punishment for sins he did not commit.

Lucrecia lies by the waterfall, unmoving. She is broken and her grieving soul is shackled to a body that no longer lives. She hears (and feels) the metal scraping against crumbling rock and wishes she could flee too. But she cannot, so she remains.

It strikes Lucrecia that she never asked about how Vincent has been, forgotten over her all-consuming concern for Sephiroth. She feels the same heavy lead feeling that she did all those years ago. The guilt returns, and she wonders why it is only Vincent that makes her feel it so.

But then she thinks of how Vincent left so suddenly, and she knows that he will return.

He would not find Lucrecia again, but he would find the weapon and the otherworldly object that she had found in the cavern and kept safe.

Her final gift; a request for forgiveness (but she would never know that Vincent wanted hers).

_fin_


End file.
